1889–1890 flu pandemic

The 12 January 1890, edition of the Paris satirical magazine Le Grelot [fr] depicted an unfortunate influenza sufferer bowled along by a parade of doctors, druggists, skeleton musicians and dancing girls representing quinine and antipyrine

The 1889–1890 flu pandemic, also known as the "Asiatic flu" or "Russian flu", was a deadly influenza pandemic that killed about 1 million people worldwide.[1][2] It was the last great pandemic of the 19th century.[3]

The most reported effects of the pandemic took place October 1889 – December 1890, with recurrences in March – June 1891, November 1891 – June 1892, winter 1893–1894 and early 1895.

Modern transport infrastructure assisted the spread of the 1889 influenza. The 19 largest European countries, including the Russian Empire, had 202,887 km of railroads and transatlantic travel by boat took less than six days (not significantly different than current travel time by air, given the time scale of the global spread of a pandemic).[7]

First reported in Bukhara, Russian Empire, in May 1889,[8][9][10] by November that year the epidemic had reached Saint Petersburg.[11] In four months it had spread throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Deaths peaked in Saint Petersburg on 1 December 1889, and in the United States during the week of 12 January 1890. The median time between the first reported case and peak mortality was five weeks.[7] In Malta, the Asiatic Flu took hold between January 1889 and March 1890, with a fatality rate of 4% (39 deaths), and a resurgence in January-May 1892 with 66 fatalities (3.3% case fatality).[12] When this flu began, whether it was contagious was debated, but its quick action and pervasiveness across all climates and terrains proved that it was.[10]

A result of the Asiatic flu in Malta is that influenza became for the first time a compulsorily notifiable illness.[13]

Map showing recorded dates of the influenza epidemic in 1889 and 1890.[14]

Researchers have tried for many years to identify the subtypes of Influenza A responsible for the 1889–1890, 1898–1900 and 1918 epidemics. Initially, this work was primarily based on "seroarcheology"—the detection of antibodies to influenza infection in the sera of elderly people—and it was thought that the 1889–1890 pandemic was caused by Influenza A subtype H2, the 1898–1900 epidemic by subtype H3, and the 1918 pandemic by subtype H1.[15] With the confirmation of H1N1 as the cause of the 1918 flu pandemic following identification of H1N1 antibodies in exhumed corpses,[15] reanalysis of seroarcheological data has indicated that Influenza A subtype H3 (possibly the H3N8 subtype), is a more likely cause for the 1889–1890 pandemic.[7][15]

After the SARS epidemic, virologists started sequencing and comparing human and animal coronaviruses, and comparison of two virus strains in the Betacoronavirus 1 species, Bovine coronavirus and Human coronavirus OC43 indicated that they had a most recent common ancestor in the late 19th century, with several methods yielding most probable dates around 1890.[5][16] Authors speculated that an introduction of the former strain to the human population might have caused the epidemic.[5]

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